Worth the Trip (10 page)

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Neither did the guards I spoke with, but I have my sources.”

“Jesus,” Trip said, laying his hands on Norah’s shoulders, “did you tell the guards?”

Hollie’s smile started to fade off, but he left her with one last hard look as Norah said, “Trip,” and turned blindly into his arms.

She didn’t stay there long, trying to claw her way free and go after Hollie. Trip held her back.

“You better pray nothing happens to my father,” she shouted over her shoulder as Trip towed her back toward the prison entrance.

“Is that a threat?”

“Do you want me to repeat it for the camera?”

“You’ve already destroyed my career,” Hollie yelled back, “what more do you think you can do to me?”

“I have a very good imagination. I’ll come up with something.”

“Okay, now you’re scaring me,” Trip said.

She wasn’t, unfortunately, having much of an effect on Hollie. Hollie crowded close, still asking questions.

“Did your father tell you where the loot is hidden?”

Norah tried to climb over Trip to get to Hollie, red hazing her vision. Trip wrapped an arm around her waist, lifted her feet off the ground, and toted her back inside the jail, putting her down once the door closed behind them.

“We need to see the warden,” Trip said to the guard.

“That’s convenient,” the guard said as he buzzed them back in, “because the warden wants to see you.”

NORAH STOOD BY HER FATHER’S BED IN THE infirmary, looking down at his bruised face and battered body and trying not to cry. She had nothing against sorrow, but her tears weren’t for her father—at least not completely. There was a lot of anger and frustration mixed in. Tears would be cathartic. She intended to hang on to all that hot emotion for the next time she came face-to-face with Hollie Roget.

“He’s going to be fine,” Trip said from the other side of the bed.

“He was lucky.”

Trip chose not to respond to that observation, and really, what could he say? The both knew the only reason Lucius was still alive was because whoever had attacked him wanted the location of the loot, and Lucius couldn’t give it up if he was dead.

“Where the hell were the guards?” she wanted to know, letting just a little of her frustration out.

“There’ll be an investigation.”

“Which will go nowhere.”

“You have no faith in the system.”

“After this you want me to have faith in a government institution?” Not to mention she was enough of her father’s daughter to be wary of law enforcement agencies, from the local deputy sheriff all the way up to the director of the FBI. There might be people who couldn’t be corrupted, but everyone had an agenda, and she was pretty sure the Bureau would pursue its goals even at the expense of her life.

“Norah.”

She met Trip’s gaze across the bed.

“I understand what you’re going through,” he said.

Coming from a man who knew how it felt to lose his parents, there was nothing he could have said to calm her more quickly than that one quiet statement.

“We’ll find out who’s responsible for this.”

“I know who’s responsible for this. Hollie—”

“Norah.”

Her name was spoken so softly this time, she’d have thought she’d imagined it if her father’s hand hadn’t tightened around hers, just for a second.

She leaned down to him, afraid she wouldn’t be able to hear him over the pounding of her heart. “I’m here, Dad.”

“Nice . . . to be . . . called Dad.”

She glanced up at Trip and smiled. “Trust you to get mileage out of something like this.”

“Always play the angle, darlin’.”

“I’m glad you said that, because the angle here is to tell me where the loot is hidden.”

“Dangerous.”

“We’ll be fine,” Trip put in.

Lucius cracked his one good eye open. “We? No. Tell Norah.”

“You expect her to go after the loot by herself?” Trip said. “Alone? No way.”

“Her decision.”

Trip looked to Norah, but he already knew she wasn’t going against her father.

The infirmary occupied a long, narrow room with a row of hospital beds along each wall, not even curtains to offer privacy. A guard and a nurse flanked the door, with a prisoner cuffed to the two beds closest to them, on opposite sides of the aisle.

Lucius was at the far end of the room, sans the cuffs since he wasn’t going anywhere—not under his own steam, anyway. Trip took himself to the middle of the aisle, about halfway between her and the door, back turned, arms crossed, looking like he should be wearing fatigues and army boots, and standing a post with a rifle in his hands. Comforting. And a little scary.

Lucius’s hand tightened slightly on hers, and Norah bent down so he could whisper in her ear. “You’re kidding,” she said, then listened some more, shaking her head. “I promise,” she told him when she was done.

She tried to let go of his hand, but he clutched at her. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Once he’d drifted off Norah joined Trip, perching herself on the end of the nearest bed. He must have had a dozen questions, but he kept them to himself, giving her a chance to get herself under control. It took an embarrassingly long time, and thankfully he didn’t offer sympathy. That would have put her right over the edge.

“He gave me the location,” she said, keeping her voice down. “I promised him it would be handled exactly as he wants.”

“There are conditions.”

“Mine,” she said, “not his. First, get my father out of here.”

“Done,” Trip said so fast she knew he’d been expecting that.

“And have Hollie Roget killed.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Right now? Yes, I do.”

He shrugged. “You’re running the show.”

Norah watched him pull out his cell phone, not saying a word while he talked, too quietly for her to hear.

“That’s it?” she said once he’d disconnected. “She’s dead?”

“Regretting your decision?”

“I wanted to watch.”

Trip grinned. “There’s a federal warrant keeping her away from you—”

“Which she’ll ignore.”

“Then I’ll have her arrested. No reputable TV station, radio station, magazine, or newspaper will touch her. Being in jail will ensure that even the tabloids keep their distance.”

“She’ll hate me even more.”

“What can she do about it? Besides, I’m pretty sure you can take her. Especially with a book in your hands.”

Norah smiled faintly. “I told you I wouldn’t be a tool or a pawn,” she said, getting back to the matter of the robbery. “I’m in this, 100 percent, or I tell the world where the hiding place is.”

“Playing the angles?”

“Absolutely.” For the highest stakes there were.

“You’re not leaving me much choice,” he said.

“I’m not leaving you any choice.”

Trip rubbed the back of his neck, but like she’d said, he had no choice but to agree, which he did.

Norah clammed up.

“You promised to tell me where it is.”

“Yes, but I didn’t say when.”

Trip smiled, if reluctantly. “Payback?”

“Self-preservation.”

HOLLIE HAD THE GOOD SENSE TO BE GONE
when they came out. Of course, it was morning by then, and Trip figured she hadn’t left for good. She wasn’t smart enough to stay away from Norah permanently.

He’d arranged for Lucius to be released, but he hadn’t even tried to budge Norah from the prison until the agents and an ambulance had arrived to transport her father. The sun was just cresting the horizon by the time they followed her father’s gurney out to an ambulance disguised as a linen delivery van, and saw him off to his safe house.

“There’s no one following him, is there?” Norah asked, her breath steaming on the cold morning air.

“Just the guys who are supposed to be following him. They’ll make sure no one crashes the party.”

Norah didn’t say anything. Norah looked like she was all done in. Trip had caught a catnap here and there in the midst of the frivolity. Every time he’d surfaced Norah had been at her father’s bedside, one of his hands in hers, her eyes on his face. The woman was stubborn, contrary, and exasperating. She was also brutally loyal to those she loved. Even if that person was a convicted felon. Sure, she’d been a pain in the ass for most of the two days he’d known her . . .

Two days.

He forgot where he’d been going with the previous thought, stunned by the brevity of a relationship that felt like it had lasted a lifetime.

“Are we leaving?”

Trip opened the passenger door of Norah’s Ford Escape hybrid, and held out his hand. She took a step back and clutched her keys tighter.

“You’re exhausted,” Trip said.

“I slept on and off.”

“Not that I noticed.”

“You mean while you were sawing logs on the bed across the aisle?”

“I woke up often enough to know you didn’t sleep.”

She shrugged. “It’s only three hundred miles to Chicago, and I can sleep when I get home. It’s not like I have to work.”

And she was blaming him for that. Which he fully deserved since he’d gone behind her back and gotten her kicked out of school—for her own good, sure, but she wasn’t ready to admit that yet. “This is ridiculous. Give me the keys.”

Norah lifted her chin and headed for the driver’s side of the Escape, and Trip thought, wrong approach. He should have reasoned with her. Not that he’d ever had much luck reasoning with a woman who could find a way around any argument. Even the logical ones.

Take now, for instance. She knew she was exhausted, she knew he’d gotten a lot more sleep than she had, and she knew there was an even better reason to let him drive. But did she hand over the keys like a rational adult? No, she got behind the wheel, her expression sulky, no doubt full of energy fuelled by anger over Hollie Roget’s irresponsible journalism and the attack on Lucius.

He sighed heavily and climbed into the passenger seat, banking on the fact that anyone coming after them would stop short of harm, since whatever Norah might know about the proceeds of the robbery would be lost if she was. “Let me know when you want me to take over,” he said as she settled herself into the driver’s seat and fastened her belt.

“Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“I can handle the sitting part,” Trip said.

Enjoying was another story, especially since, moments after Norah picked up Interstate 57 north out of Marion, Illinois, she also picked up a tail.

Norah thought five miles under the posted limit was a reasonable speed. A black Cadillac Escalade SUV paced them a dozen car lengths back, bigger, faster, having trouble with the pokey pace but not trying very hard to go unnoticed. No doubt they already knew where Norah lived. Which could mean only one thing.

“Too tired to drive the speed limit?” he said to Norah.

She looked over at him, then back at the road. “Is there a reason you’re trying to goad me into driving faster?”

Trip sighed heavily.

“You do that a lot,” she observed.

“It’s a new habit I’ve picked up since meeting you.”

“There’s a simple remedy for it.”

“Sure, you could cooperate once in a while.”

“It’s not cooperation if I’m the one making all the compromises.”

Trip let his head fall back against the seat, suddenly worn out. “Just once it would be nice if you followed directions without all the time-wasting discussion.”

“It’s not logical to expect blind trust from someone you’ve only known for two days.”

Trip made a sound that definitely wasn’t a sigh. It came from the back of his throat, for one thing, and there was a lot more frustration than exasperation involved.

“You haven’t answered my question” was Norah’s reaction.

He caught himself before he sighed again. “There’s a black SUV behind us. Last I checked he was one lane over and two cars back.”

“We’re out of Marion. The traffic is thinner.” Norah sat up straighter, giving the Escape a little more gas while she checked out the road behind her in the rearview mirror. “But the SUV is still there.”

“They won’t be content to hang back once there are no other cars on the road.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we can keep driving and wait for them to make a move, or we can pick the time and place, get a little control over the outcome.”

“I’m all for Door Number Two,” she said, glancing over at him, looking a little frightened and a lot open to suggestion.

And here he was with a completely empty suggestion box. The terrain didn’t offer much help either. Marion USP sat about three hundred miles from Chicago, at the southern end of the state, about halfway between the Missouri and Kentucky borders. It was a fairly straight shot down Interstate 57, and the adjective that best described the terrain was
flat
. There was a hill here and there, a stream or small river to keep things from being completely boring, and towns of various sizes were peppered along the route, but Trip preferred to keep the innocent bystanders innocent, and unharmed. As far as topographical features that might work to their advantage in the current situation, it was pretty much a bust.